POWER

Quirk found

Category: Math and trigonometry · Last tested 2026-09-01

Real compatibility results for the POWER function: executed in Excel for the web, Google Sheets and LibreOffice Calc, with desktop Excel behavior from Microsoft’s official documentation (we do not run desktop Excel — Excel for the web is a different application and is executed separately). Syntax and links to that documentation are below.

Support matrix

Engine	Documented	Live-tested	Verdict
Excel (desktop)	Yes	No — documented only	n/a
Excel for the web	—	Yes (recalc, 2026-09-01)	Quirk found
Google Sheets	Yes	Yes (Drive import, 2026-08-29)	Quirk found
LibreOffice Calc	Yes	Yes (25.8.7.3, 2026-07-29)	Quirk found

LibreOffice version history

We executed the same test cases under each LibreOffice release to show exactly when POWER’s support changed — not documentation claims, real results.

LibreOffice version	Verdict	Tested
24.2.0.3	Quirk found	2026-08-29
24.8.7.2	Quirk found	2026-08-29
25.2.0.3	Quirk found	2026-08-29
25.8.7.3	Quirk found	2026-07-29

Why isn't POWER working in LibreOffice?

POWER exists in LibreOffice 25.8.7.3, but it is not a drop-in match for Excel — our executed tests found real behavioral differences (detailed in the test results on this page). If a formula that works in Excel or Google Sheets misbehaves in LibreOffice, compare your usage against the failing cases above before assuming your data is wrong.

Why isn’t POWER working in Google Sheets?

POWER runs in Google Sheets, but our executed cases show it does not match Excel’s documented behavior on every input (the failing cases are listed on this page). If a formula that behaves one way in Excel gives you a different answer in Sheets, compare your usage against those cases before assuming your data is wrong.

Discovered quirks

=POWER(-8,1/3) on Excel for the web returned -1.9999999999999998, but the documented/expected result is #NUM!.
Provenance
Confirmed via Microsoft's own community support: entering =(-8)^(2/3) (equivalent power semantics to POWER) returns #NUM! in Excel -- https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/excel-calculating-exponential-of-negative-number/5c67eae2-5682-4daf-b3d6-50b22e9919c2 -- note that -8^(1/3) is mathematically -2 as a real cube root, but Excel's POWER/^ implementation does not special-case rational exponents with odd integer denominators and returns #NUM! for any negative base with a non-integer exponent; MISMATCH vs expected: expected '#NUM!', got -1.9999999999999998
=POWER(0,0) on Excel for the web returned #NUM!, but the documented/expected result is 1.
Provenance
Real Excel (the worksheet function, and even the '^' operator) has a long-standing, Microsoft-acknowledged bug -- reproduced in Excel 2007 and 2010 and still reported unresolved -- where both '=0^0' and '=POWER(0,0)' incorrectly return #NUM! instead of 1, even though VBA's own 'x = 0 ^ 0' correctly evaluates to 1 in the same product. Recording the spec/cross-engine-consensus value (1) as 'expected' here so this exact Excel quirk shows up as a flagged divergence rather than being silently baked in as 'correct' -- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/4850441/excel-formula-bug-00-gives-num; MISMATCH vs expected: expected 1, got '#NUM!'
=POWER(-8,1/3) on Google Sheets returned -2, but the documented/expected result is #NUM!.
Provenance
Confirmed via Microsoft's own community support: entering =(-8)^(2/3) (equivalent power semantics to POWER) returns #NUM! in Excel -- https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/excel-calculating-exponential-of-negative-number/5c67eae2-5682-4daf-b3d6-50b22e9919c2 -- note that -8^(1/3) is mathematically -2 as a real cube root, but Excel's POWER/^ implementation does not special-case rational exponents with odd integer denominators and returns #NUM! for any negative base with a non-integer exponent; MISMATCH vs expected: expected '#NUM!', got -2
=POWER(-8,1/3) on LibreOffice Calc returned -2, but the documented/expected result is #NUM!.
Provenance
Confirmed via Microsoft's own community support: entering =(-8)^(2/3) (equivalent power semantics to POWER) returns #NUM! in Excel -- https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/excel-calculating-exponential-of-negative-number/5c67eae2-5682-4daf-b3d6-50b22e9919c2 -- note that -8^(1/3) is mathematically -2 as a real cube root, but Excel's POWER/^ implementation does not special-case rational exponents with odd integer denominators and returns #NUM! for any negative base with a non-integer exponent; MISMATCH vs expected: expected '#NUM!', got -2

Executed test cases

Excel for the web (executed 2026-09-01 via OneDrive recalculation)

These values come from Excel for the web, not from desktop Excel. They are two different implementations of the calculation engine, and this run measured only the web one: the corpus was uploaded to OneDrive as .xlsx, recalculated by Excel for the web on open, and downloaded again for readback. Excel for the web is a rolling service with no pinnable version, so the run is identified by its date. Where a value here disagrees with the Expected column — which is Microsoft’s documentation of the desktop product — we cannot tell you whether the web engine diverges from the desktop one or the documentation is wrong about both, because we do not run desktop Excel.

Formula	Description	Result	Expected	Verdict
=POWER(2,3)	2 raised to the 3rd power	8	8	Matched
=POWER(2,-2)	Negative exponent gives a reciprocal power	0.25	0.25	Matched
=POWER(9,0.5)	Fractional exponent on a positive base is a well-defined real root (square root here)	3	3	Matched
=POWER(-8,1/3)	A negative base raised to a non-integer exponent has no real-number result in general (would require complex numbers), so Excel errors	-1.9999999999999998	#NUM! Provenance Confirmed via Microsoft's own community support: entering =(-8)^(2/3) (equivalent power semantics to POWER) returns #NUM! in Excel -- https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/excel-calculating-exponential-of-negative-number/5c67eae2-5682-4daf-b3d6-50b22e9919c2 -- note that -8^(1/3) is mathematically -2 as a real cube root, but Excel's POWER/^ implementation does not special-case rational exponents with odd integer denominators and returns #NUM! for any negative base with a non-integer exponent	Mismatch
=POWER(0,0)	0 raised to the 0th power; by the near-universal 'empty product' convention this is 1 (matches VBA's own '0^0', Python, C#, and LibreOffice/OpenOffice Calc)	#NUM!	1 Provenance Real Excel (the worksheet function, and even the '^' operator) has a long-standing, Microsoft-acknowledged bug -- reproduced in Excel 2007 and 2010 and still reported unresolved -- where both '=0^0' and '=POWER(0,0)' incorrectly return #NUM! instead of 1, even though VBA's own 'x = 0 ^ 0' correctly evaluates to 1 in the same product. Recording the spec/cross-engine-consensus value (1) as 'expected' here so this exact Excel quirk shows up as a flagged divergence rather than being silently baked in as 'correct' -- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/4850441/excel-formula-bug-00-gives-num	Mismatch

Google Sheets (executed 2026-08-29 via Drive import)

Google Sheets is a rolling service with no pinnable version, so this run is identified by its date. The corpus was imported to Drive as .xlsx, recalculated by Sheets, and exported back for readback.

Formula	Description	Result	Expected	Verdict
=POWER(2,3)	2 raised to the 3rd power	8	8	Matched
=POWER(2,-2)	Negative exponent gives a reciprocal power	0.25	0.25	Matched
=POWER(9,0.5)	Fractional exponent on a positive base is a well-defined real root (square root here)	3	3	Matched
=POWER(-8,1/3)	A negative base raised to a non-integer exponent has no real-number result in general (would require complex numbers), so Excel errors	-2	#NUM! Provenance Confirmed via Microsoft's own community support: entering =(-8)^(2/3) (equivalent power semantics to POWER) returns #NUM! in Excel -- https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/excel-calculating-exponential-of-negative-number/5c67eae2-5682-4daf-b3d6-50b22e9919c2 -- note that -8^(1/3) is mathematically -2 as a real cube root, but Excel's POWER/^ implementation does not special-case rational exponents with odd integer denominators and returns #NUM! for any negative base with a non-integer exponent	Mismatch
=POWER(0,0)	0 raised to the 0th power; by the near-universal 'empty product' convention this is 1 (matches VBA's own '0^0', Python, C#, and LibreOffice/OpenOffice Calc)	1	1 Provenance Real Excel (the worksheet function, and even the '^' operator) has a long-standing, Microsoft-acknowledged bug -- reproduced in Excel 2007 and 2010 and still reported unresolved -- where both '=0^0' and '=POWER(0,0)' incorrectly return #NUM! instead of 1, even though VBA's own 'x = 0 ^ 0' correctly evaluates to 1 in the same product. Recording the spec/cross-engine-consensus value (1) as 'expected' here so this exact Excel quirk shows up as a flagged divergence rather than being silently baked in as 'correct' -- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/4850441/excel-formula-bug-00-gives-num	Matched

LibreOffice Calc 25.8.7.3 (tested 2026-07-29)

Formula	Description	Result	Expected	Verdict
=POWER(2,3)	2 raised to the 3rd power	8	8	Matched
=POWER(2,-2)	Negative exponent gives a reciprocal power	0.25	0.25	Matched
=POWER(9,0.5)	Fractional exponent on a positive base is a well-defined real root (square root here)	3	3	Matched
=POWER(-8,1/3)	A negative base raised to a non-integer exponent has no real-number result in general (would require complex numbers), so Excel errors	-2	#NUM! Provenance Confirmed via Microsoft's own community support: entering =(-8)^(2/3) (equivalent power semantics to POWER) returns #NUM! in Excel -- https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/all/excel-calculating-exponential-of-negative-number/5c67eae2-5682-4daf-b3d6-50b22e9919c2 -- note that -8^(1/3) is mathematically -2 as a real cube root, but Excel's POWER/^ implementation does not special-case rational exponents with odd integer denominators and returns #NUM! for any negative base with a non-integer exponent	Mismatch
=POWER(0,0)	0 raised to the 0th power; by the near-universal 'empty product' convention this is 1 (matches VBA's own '0^0', Python, C#, and LibreOffice/OpenOffice Calc)	1	1 Provenance Real Excel (the worksheet function, and even the '^' operator) has a long-standing, Microsoft-acknowledged bug -- reproduced in Excel 2007 and 2010 and still reported unresolved -- where both '=0^0' and '=POWER(0,0)' incorrectly return #NUM! instead of 1, even though VBA's own 'x = 0 ^ 0' correctly evaluates to 1 in the same product. Recording the spec/cross-engine-consensus value (1) as 'expected' here so this exact Excel quirk shows up as a flagged divergence rather than being silently baked in as 'correct' -- https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/4850441/excel-formula-bug-00-gives-num	Matched

Docs & syntax

Excel (desktop): official documentation
Google Sheets: official documentation
LibreOffice Calc: official documentation

Where POWER behaves differently

FVSCHEDULE: LibreOffice drops text in the rate schedule
Microsoft documents any non-numeric value in FVSCHEDULE's schedule as #VALUE!. Executed, LibreOffice 25.8.7.3 returns 1.09 for =FVSCHEDULE(1,A1:A2) with A2 = "x" - a compounding period silently dropped - while Google Sheets returns #VALUE! as documented.
POWER(-8,1/3) is documented as #NUM! but returns about -2 in every engine we run
Executed evidence: =POWER(-8,1/3) returns -1.9999999999999998 in Excel for the web (2026-09-01), -2 in Google Sheets (2026-08-29) and -2 in all four LibreOffice builds, while Microsoft documents #NUM! for a negative base with a non-integer exponent. The real divergence is =POWER(0,0): 1 in Sheets and LibreOffice, #NUM! in the web build.